An Example of How the Apple TV Remote Fails the Apple TV

Feb 4, 2018

Watched the Super Bowl today with my Apple TV using the Channels app which uses my Mac mini with the HD HomeRun HDTV receiver. A lots of pieces to set up but it worked great. The part that didn’t work great was the Apple TV remote.

The specific function that wasn’t reliable was the skip forward. I would let the Live signal buffer by hitting pause. I could buffer about 30 min before playback just starts up. I assume the buffer was full. I would watch a play and then click on the right side of the remote. Usually my thumb would be half on/half off the remote clicker/track pad. About half the time this would do what I expected and skip 30 seconds ahead. Perfect for getting to the next snap.

The other half of the time, the playback would pause. Now I don’t honestly know if this was a problem with the Apple TV Channels app, or with the remote sending the wrong command. I’m inclined to think the latter because the Channels app is really good. If they could, I don’t think they would make such an error.

Apple could have solved this by just giving us dedicated buttons, but Apple being Apple (whom I love), they had to get overly clever and then ignore further development. At least that’s how it feels.

When it worked I was thrilled. Each time it didn’t, I wanted to throw the remote across the room. The whole game was a series of going from elation to absolute anger. And that had nothing to do with the game I was watching.